Gavin McInnes has described the Proud Boys as a "drinking club," one that happens to march around in specific colored shirts. McInnes literally modeled the Proud Boys on the early years of the Nazi party.
No not literal nazis. They're just fascist white supremacists. I don't understand why so many people dislike using "nazi" as a shorthand for "fascist white supremacists".
I'm reading the wiki on them (admittedly not the best or most unbiased source) and I don't really buy that they're white supremacists since among other things their leader is afro-cuban. But fascistic sure, I could see that.
Without playing the enlightened centrist card too strongly I don't see anything particularly more disturbing about the proud boys than I have from antifa. Of course antifa can't be accused of being fascistic since their name is literally "anti-fascism" and if you call yourself anti facist then obviously it is impossible to be a fascist.
What should disturb you is that there were far more deaths caused by right-wing terrorists than by left-wing terrorists in the past year, like, by a factor of 20 or 30.
So no, the violence is not equal on both sides. One side is, objectively, worse. White supremacy and neofascism are the biggest threats to the country right now. It's not Muslims and it's not immigrants. If letting Antifa have their music-festival autonomous zones is the price we must pay to stop nazis from running amok in America's streets, so be it.
Also, I hope Biden restructures the Supreme Court and they overturn Brandenburg v. Ohio, paving the way for criminalizing hate speech in America so law enforcement can finally crack down on these groups.
>...Also, I hope Biden restructures the Supreme Court and they overturn Brandenburg v. Ohio, paving the way for criminalizing hate speech in America so law enforcement can finally crack down on these groups.
There are many who would like to criminalize speech they don't like. What they don't realize is that the results likely wouldn't be what they were hoping for.
Brandenburg overturned cases like U.S. v. Schenck which involved whether Schenck could be convicted under the Espionage Act for the crime of writing and distributing a pamphlet that expressed his opposition to the draft. That is the dangerous idea that sent a person to prison.
The law enforcement have always had a weird relationship with white supremacy. For example, The Base is not classified as a terrorist group, despite the fact that their members travel abroad to Ukraine to fight in Donbass, and they explicitly state in captured Telegram(tm) communications that they are training with the paramilitaries so they can more efficiently commit acts of terror when they return to the U.S. Despite that, the FBI still does not designate them as terrorists. The FBI prefers to call them "racially motivated violent extremists" or RMVEs. Still, officially, the FBI considers RMVEs to be equivalent in threat to foreign terrorists, but this was only recently announced in 2019. Progress is slow, but it happens. The whole cyberwar with 8chan has been fascinating to watch and it has given me a lot of hope for the future. I highly recommend reading if you are uninformed.
White supremacist fascist terrorism in the U.S. is real hard to deal with, mostly because it is very well hidden and decentralized. Communications are primarily through private end-to-end encrypted messaging apps. Organizations are more like alliances of isolated autonomous cells rather than one unified structure. Symbols, names and logos are often changed to avoid any association with genocide or fascism. The people who actually commit terrorist acts, such as Patrick Crusius who killed 20 people in an El Paso Walmart, are not publicly associated with any specific group, despite being radicalized through public communication channels appropriated by such groups. The cryptic nature of white supremacist groups also grants them considerable immunity to information war. "Antifa" and "Black Lives Matter" are recognizable brands with icons, logos, flags, colors; anyone can download those symbols and use them to misrepresent and discredit the movement. This in my opinion was the greatest mistake that Black Lives Matter and Antifa made. They underestimated and continue to underestimate the power of the media misinformation machine which is currently targeting them. They still haven't accepted that we are post-truth, post-reality, operating on a purely emotional level. They will find great success when they learn how to use their messaging to connect with Americans on the heart level rather than trying to use shocking slogans to communicate complex high-level intellectual concepts to literal primates. For example, "DEFUND THE POLICE" was a terrible slogan almost perfectly designed to fail, despite the fact that I would not mind defunding the police if it meant we could offer better education to the 40% of American children currently failing school under social distancing.
The world now revolves around memes and emotions, not facts and science. Activism can only succeed if it is adapted to this new era of humanity.